Wireless sensor network for continuous temperature monitoring in air-cooled data centers: Applications and measurement results

Abstract

Temperature monitoring in data centers is essential for reliably operating the data processing equipment and minimizing the required cooling energy. For this purpose, we track the temperatures at key locations in the data center with low-cost sensors and forward the captured information via the ZRL Data Center Wireless Sensor Network (DCWSN) to a monitoring client. Applications include continuous temperature monitoring, data collection for thermal modeling, and temperature sensing for real-time control of cold air flow and workload allocation. The DCWSN has been successfully deployed in production data centers. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.